The petroleum industry is no stranger to large volumes of data. Operating in arguably the original sensor-based industry, oil and gas companies have for decades used tens of thousands of data-collecting sensors installed in subsurface wells and surface facilities to provide continuous, real-time monitoring of assets and the environment in which they’re operating.

Today, oil and gas companies can capture an even greater variety of data at greater volumes and faster velocities. In addition to sensor data, new unstructured sources of data like drilling and production measurements, daily operations logs, financial data and even social media can be quickly integrated to create a single view of drilling or production operations.

Real-time insight from these new data sources can help oil companies monitor equipment and wells across their entire operation. Critical for avoiding downtime, costly repairs and safety issues caused by equipment failures, this real-time insight works by enabling timely, informed decisions about when to schedule equipment maintenance, which in turn maximizes asset uptime, therefore increasing production output.

Critical decisions can now be made much faster and more accurately. Real-time, interactive dashboards and reports allow oil company personnel to quickly get different views and drill into information about a specific well or asset so when something changes, they know immediately and can take the preemptive, prescriptive action.

IBM Big Data & Analytics capabilities enable drilling and production assets to be assessed individually, but rolled up into an enterprise-wide operations view by collecting, managing and analyzing large volumes of data. These capabilities represent the most cost effective, efficient means of ingesting, analyzing and visualizing all the data needed to accurately assess what’s happening in the oil field in real time.

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